Sunday, 30 July 2017

The Mastodon is one of the largest land vehicles available to the Space Marines, and now their evil cousins can take one of these mountains of ceramite. But with a pricetag matching its size, I thought I'd have a go at building my own.

And I had the perfect donor vehicles. I had a leman russ and two thirds of a land raider doing nothing usedul, and with some wider tracks looted from baneblades and Blood and Skulls Industry, this formed the basis of the tank.

Next was to block out the hull. The giant tank is mainly plasticard, build around the four track units. So far I've only build the basic structure with no details. I plan to skin the tank in armour later down the line.

I've also started two of the main weapons. The first, the Melta array, is a Knights melta cannon turned on its side. With little work it is the perfect start.

Next, it's the soulreaper areay. I had a spare hunter cannon, so with a mult-barrel tip from a hades autocannon, it formed the perfect count-as.

It is still early days, but I can see it coming together, slowly, but surely. The next step will be the front. I want to keep motovated, so I'll make a start on the front doors and the rest of the melta array.

Sunday, 16 July 2017

Having enough carry cases seems to be a big issue for me at the moment. So with some free Amazon vouchers and half an hour, I looked round for some cheap and cheerful carry cases. So today, we're looking at one of the budget options from Tabletop Tyrant.

The model I have is their smallest one, the Skirmish.

At around £12 (which varies from around £12-15 dependjng on the foam chosen) is less than half the cost of my usual go-to KR case. It's also much smaller, about the size of a small shoebox. This makes it perfect for new starters with small armies, or even experienced players with small games in the week, who don't want to carry a much larger case where half the models are not needed.

In terms of box quality it certainly feels like a shoebox. It's quite cheap feeling corrigated card, and doesn't have the same sense of stength KR card cases do. It also arrived pre-damaged, despite being delivered inside two other boxes. It will holdup during normal use, but don't expect it to survive a quick shower or light drizzle. It looses a few points here.

The foam is a bit better. It is sturdy, firm, and feels quite good. You get two sheets of foam for models, and a thin topper sheet to protect the top layer. It also fits the case well, with no rattling. It's not the most securely put together though: each piece of pluck is only held on by a tiny amount, so whilst easy to pick out, there is a risk of separation of pieces under heavy use.

The case was advertised offering a capacity of around 32 models. With the pluck foam configuration, you only get about 28. The pluck foam, whilst customisable is incredibly inefficient. Without the use of a knife, about 50% of the remaining space in the tray is foam, when you take out single blocks with a 1 block separating gap.

I had to resort to modifying the slots as it was so wasteful, and it now has much more potential. With some minor surgery, I could easily fit 20 standard infantry models per tray, and the second tray can fit my more unusually shaped models. As it is a small case it's not suitable for tanks or monsters, unless you cut up the trays. I managed to fit a lot of daemons, including:

20 pink horrors

10 blue horrors

10 brimstone horrors

4 flamers

1 exhalted flamer

1 herald

So you can fit a decent amount in, if you are willing to do a bit of customisation to the foam sheets.

If you are after a small cheap case, then the Skirmish is an alright option. If it wasn't free by technicality I would go for another brand, but if you do choose Tabletop Tyrant, it's certainly suitable for the job, and with a bit of cutting and slicing can be much more efficient in the use of space, allowing you to fit a decent sized infantry army in.